Why has the Romani holocaust received so little attention?

[gullgal]

It is estimated that somewhere between 250,000 to 500,000 European Roma and Sinti people were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. This amounts to between a quarter or a half of the entire population of Roma. They call it the devouring I believe. Yet it is rarely invoked and Roma peoole are heavily discriminated against, and there is little awareness of their historical trauma. I can't understand why. Certainly I only learnt it very late in life.

For those who actually would like to know a bit more history and can think outside of stereotypes:

It is difficult to explain the enormous cultural differences between us, them, and you, which mean it wasn't right, or even possible for Rom to do what Jews chose to do after the war.

It is also hard to explain how history has proved it right without people starting to be anti-semetic, or think we are.

The same issue with explaining about how pictures of Roma children where appropriated as being of Jewish children.
Gaudja could relate to pictures of Jewish children, but not interested in Romani children for decades.
Even the Jews took a long time to recognize that saying it didn't matter if pictures of Rom children headed to death, where being shown as Jewish children was wrong, because it was eradicating the identity of the eradicated.
At that time it was particularly important for the Jews to separate themselves from even more unpopular races and other groups. Survival and all that.

If we try to talk of any of it, quickly people will decide wrongly either we hate Jews, or the attempted eradication's where understandable, and the usual accusations are poured out.

(Edited to say: wrote that before the offensive posts started!)

Rom where and are more concerned with the survival of the living culture.
The majority mourn the dead of the Samudaripen or Porrajmos and destruction of specific races within the race, as a private tragedy of death and misfortune that would easily be appropriated or encourage more of the same to happen.

There is no space for us in your society. We have different ideas of how a society should work, and they are contrary to yours. You tried to force our assimilation and are left with the better of us mainly hidden, and mainly Irish travelers in our place.

You cannot give us back the space you have taken and wonder why we aren't shouting about the attempted 'final solution' when we have been through so many negative solutions to our continued existence...

Below is just Germany. Hatred of both Rom and Jews was everywhere and continuous.

Rom had been subjected to extermination laws based on race in Germany from 1566 by Maximillian I (the first anti Rom laws are 1416) and these mass exterminations weren't something new.

1659 saw the first big German mass murders of Rom in Neudorf.
1710 Frederick I enslaved all Rom men, all women whipped and branded, and children taken. Any who fought back legally killed.
1721 extermination of all Rom ordered by Emperor Karl VI. Mass round up and mass murder.
1725, All surviving Rom 18 and over that could be caught, to be hanged.

Throughout the 1800's lots of notables wrote about Rom as 'racial vermin' including the idea that not 'owning a country was in itself a marker.' (Even Darwin thought Jews and Rom to be 'less culturally advanced')
The idea of Volk came into being and being without it would become a nothing, 'a phantom like the Gypsies and Jews.'
Non-territoriality marked Rom (and Jews) as asocials, even if Rom where in the army, police, or landed farmers or vineyard owners. Then blood and degrees of ancestry was used to define who both were

1863, Richard Liebich secured the concept that Rom where "lives unworthy of life" It was not an unusual attitude, but it cements it within acceptable ideas around polishing up the Nordic Master Race.

By then casual individual and whole group murders happened regularly, but not seen as being crimes worthy of investigation.

1929 'Lives unworthy of living ' was the joint book title of a psychiatrist and a magistrate arguing for euthanasia of the Ballastexistenzen. 'The dead
weight within humanity.' This was the physically deformed, hereditary diseases, and in unrecoverable comas. The Rom where placed under 'hereditary diseased.'

After the war many Jewish societies sought to raise their race from being seen as asocial by pointing out their similarity of lifestyle to the Gentile. In the process pointing out the differences of many Rom to the Guadja. I'm afraid plenty of Jews at that time, wanted to distance themselves to the point of claiming they where the only ones selected for eradication through race.

The talk is always of Rom as an illiterate wandering underclass. But before WW11 there was a whole more educated sector, our equivalent to historians and academics and your educated middle class.
Many of these people often had semi settled lives, owning land and businesses, and traveling between them and events and gatherings.
Some had family partially married in with Gaudja, and held positions in both societies. They tended to come from particular Vitsia (family lineage) and Natsia (races within race)

Someone asked "Where was the Romani Wiesenthal?"
Most of the educated, semi settled, and settled Rom, were amongst the first easily rounded up and killed.

At least 70% (potentially more as only those with papers are counted by Gaudja) of all Rom in countries overtaken by the Nazis where dead.

Those at the bottom end of Rom society more likely to be survivors, those most educated and connected in Gadja society, more likely to be dead.
The distrust of Rom was ingrained even in those horrified by the treatment of them, and it ingrained further mutual distrust.

No Rom brought to testify at the Nuremberg Trials regardless of education or former social standing. The few that survived in the camps had to either serve the liberating armies by cleaning them up or go into hiding, as still in effect pre-Nazi laws put them straight back into detention if they left and weren't born in Germany or no longer had documents to show they where.

Then, and this is my surviving (4 of 42) families story, the Yalta agreement was made and DP's who where supposed to go to the country of the liberators they'd worked for, for 18 months, where instead often deported as labor to which other country had been given the territory the camp was in. In the case of my parent, to be interned until mid 1950's in Russia.

Wiesenthal was found in Mauthausen by the Americans, who where interested in it as a war crime scene. He was encouraged to write lists of names, and when Mauthausen was allocated to the Russians, he was lucky enough to be taken with the Americans when they withdrew. This was unusual and the start of his new career, later funded by Mossad. He assisted Bricha smuggling Jewish survivors into British Palestine which ended with the establishment of Israel.
(We all know how that's panning out)

Does anyone really think that the powers that be would have been funding Rom to seek trials and seize land? (apart from the later to be against Rom laws)

It took to mid 1950's for far fewer Rom survivors (three out of four known dead) to be even finding each other.

By then decisions had been made by the Kriss (Rom courts) that for the survival of the race, Rom should concentrate on being as hidden as possible, not make the mistake of trusting Gaudja again (ie being part of their communities as before)
When a couple of Rom chose to have work published about what had happened, they collaborated with Gaudja to publish their accepted work from Rom into Gaudja languages and disclosed cultural secrets in interviews that secrecy about could save future lives.

They had broken the law and where duly punished by banishment.
Just as you imprison those who do things that break your laws, and threaten your societies, before the pile on about how horrible we are starts.

The Gaudja who had been involved did not understand what they had done, and thought awards from their culture somehow more important than being accepted in ones own.

Being ‘not a fan’ of whole ethnic groups is racism. If you are happy being a racist, and you want your children to be racists in turn, then nobody here can help you really 🤷‍♀️

also I don’t know if you’re aware but you seem to merging distinct communities with different languages, histories etc (Romani, Irish travellers etc) into a single group.

But it is well known - I was taught this as a child. It’s mentioned in any book on the camps I have ever read.

In The Camps Yellow Stars were worn by Jewish prisoners (if they belonged to another group deemed undesirable a third triangle of the corresponding colour could be added).

Black triangles for the "asocial," including Roma, vagrants, the mentally unwell , alcoholics (Roma were sometimes given a brown triangle).

Red for political prisoners, including socialists, communists, trade unionists, resistance members etc

Green - Criminals.

Purple - Jehovah’s Witnesses

Pink - Homosexuals and sexual offenders

Blue - Foreign forced labourers

Just go away.

I doubt in the midst of a world war that any of those issues were important to the men actually fighting. I've seen no evidence that what you say was the case.

Though it remained a criminal offence until the 1960s, for the most part homosexuality was unofficially tolerated in the armed services for the duration of the war. For some heterosexual servicemen, homosexual sex was considered preferable to going to brothels and catching a sexually transmitted disease. Some gay men could be open and were protected by their comrades; others were considered good for morale and became ‘mascots’. One British soldier repressed his homosexuality and left letters from a fictitious son lying about his barracks.
Others, who were found out, were court-martialled, imprisoned and thrown out of the services.

At the end of the war, the British public wanted to get back to ‘normal’, so women were expected to return to the kitchen, black recruits were expected to return to west Africa and the West Indies, and homosexual men found themselves subjected to the draconian law that would see them in prison, even if they had helped to win the war. In 1945, the Public Morality Council officer noted: “Police are again conducting a campaign against those engaged in this deplorable offence.”

You picked on one bit of my post but it is reality that gay people(and other groups) were marginalised, brutalised and treated with contempt (at best) or made into criminals before, during and after the war.

While LGBT men did serve (despite being considered not brave enough and often prevented from joining) we’re talking hundreds of thousands out of millions. Even if camaraderie won out (and not always) in the actual trenches, once the war was over it was back to normal. At a societal level, there was never going to be much mourning or recognition of people considered “less than” .

I think it’s a combination of numbers of people involved and also theres an element of public relations in there. Jews were obviously the worst effected group and there are lots of institutions that work to keep the memory of the holacaust and what happened to Jews alive whereas Romani dont havd the same P.R. there isn’t any hard hitting movies about gypsies during holocaust as far as Im aware.

I’d draw a parallel with the slave trade in the 16th to 19th century. We’ve all heard of west African slave trade over 12 million people transported from Africa to U.S. and West Indies etc. We learn it in school, theres films and information galore. At the same time there was also Barbery slave trade where pirates / privateers would operate out of North African ports and attack merchant vessels and coastal settlements as far up as Iceland. Over a million people were enslaved. I’d never heard of it till I was an adult. I’m not saying we shouldnt learn about west African slavery but it seems to me that it is the only type of slavery taught in schools as in this was a terrible period of history which has now ended to the exclusion of other victims and slso modern day slavery. Over 27 million are estimated to be modern day slaves forced to labour or be sold for sex.

The holocaust is taught as a terrible thing that happened to Jews in the past. However we should remember all victims of the holocaust knowing that the discrimination that led to their persecution is ongoing today whether Jewish, Romani, disabled or gay.

It is hard though I think ,generally, people want easy definitive answers and a catchy slogan rather thsn any kind of informed nuance.

The War Department, unwilling to be used, as officials put it, as ‘a sociological laboratory’, isolated black troops into all-black units and provided them with separate training facilities and accommodation. Though the War Department hailed the conflict against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as a fight for liberty, they simultaneously continued a long-established doctrine that maintained that black people should be ‘separate but equal.’

Such equality did not actually emerge for black forces through the roles, treatment or living conditions made available to them in the services.

@Petrine do you not read? At all?

I was going to post a photo of something I saw in Nuremberg last year, but it looks like I cleaned up my camera reel and deleted it. Modern day Germany has detailed information boards and museums about the Nazi regime everywhere, it's really good.

So, outside a tram stop there was a little information board there about a previous public toilet on the spot that had been a gay "cottage", and the police used to entrap gay men there. One of the guys was in his late teens- they arrested, imprisoned and castrated him.

Upon release he tried to kill himself by jumping in the river, but failed and was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He did survive the war, albeit mutilated for life.

Thanks for these detailed and informative posts AtchinTan.

The Romani response is very reminiscent to me of women's response to sexual abuse and assault until very recently- keep it secret, don't tell anyone because you can't trust them not to minimise it or twist it into a weapon against you. (Sorry if that analogy comes across as crass- it just occurred to me that I could instinctively understand why they didn't want to tell)

Thanks for this interesting and informative thread.

Unfortunately I live in an area where it seems acceptable to abuse and discriminate against people who do not look / live like the majority. This abuse takes place in public and on social media and it really gets me down.
I am pleased read the positive and supportive comments here.

I dont know about the Romanis but certainly the Slavs had more murdered by the Nazis than the Jews did

Im sure there are other groups who arent really recognised either.

Horrific.

Little awareness? What?

Did you not think it's common knowledge because you didn't know it????

Research findings: 55% of British people surveyed unaware that over 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were killed in the Holocaust - Friends, Families and Travellers https://share.google/xVmZWrtBt7SgDicj6

I'm not sure what you mean

Looks like the general knowledge on this time is pretty woeful across the board. So probably the same 45% of people who knew about the tragedy of the Roma people are the 48% of people who knew about the Jews.

www.claimscon.org/uk-study/

Just a very small Google will find many sources discussing the comparative lack of knowledge of the Romani holocaust so I am not imagining it. For example: "The Samudaripen, meaning ‘the mass killing’, is a Romani term for the genocide carried out against Europe’s Roma and Sinti communities by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. However, there is very little public awareness of the horrific crimes committed against the Roma and Sinti, which is why the Romani genocide is often referred to as ‘the Forgotten Holocaust’. "https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/2019/12/09/426/

I’m in my 50s and recall the enumeration and discussion of the various groups targeted during the holocaust. We even had to memorize which symbols each group had to wear. I don’t remember which is which anymore, but I remember the lesson.

Not being sure on the number(and still talking in millions) is different to not knowing at all.

The question relating to Roma people and Sinti was

Over 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were killed by Nazi’s during the Holocaust. Before taking this survey, were you aware that these people were killed by the Nazi’s during the Holocaust?’

There’s none as blind as those who don’t want to see.

So if that happened, I would be upset with the ONE PERSON who did it. Not an entire ethnic group. You’re a racist.